北欧メロンパン

Jag har precis tvingats titta på två galna svenskar totalt göra bort sig på Japansk TV…varför?…De var där för att spela in ett program för svensk TV!? Det hela får mig på nytt att undra var som är värst, svensk eller japansk TV. Programmen här i Japan må vara bitvis fåniga och handlar till 50% om mat (nej inte hur man lagar det, bara en massa kändisar som äter och berättar hur gott det är, det e bra TV det!???). MEN de är faktiskt förvånansvärt ofta förvånansvärt underhållande medan svensk TV gärna bara går överstyr och bara blir aptråkigt (med Filip och Fredrik i spetsen).

Hursomhelst heter tydligen det svenska programmet “Big in Japan”. Det japanska hette Arabikidan och går ut på att två lirare sitter och dissar misslyckade “up and comming” komiker. Jag måste hålla med de japanska programledarna som undrade hur de ska lyckas göra en hel säsong, “De där knäppa svenskarna asså. Jaja, de kommer ju aldrig få vara med i något annat program så det är väl slut nu?”. ;p

Ok nu har jag fixat upp foton från asienresan, håll till godo!

Time passes ever so quickly and I seem to have neglected the blog for a little too long again. The exam period for this half of the term has already begun (I actually had my first test today already, I think I passed ) so I’m going to be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks. I’ll also mostly be studying so there might not be an abundance of interesting stuff to write about either. Bare with me though, school ends on the 12:th of June.

In the updates about “Project Japan” department, I have now received the documents I need for my visa application from FS and I’ll be sending the application to the Japanese embassy any day now, exciting stuff, makes the whole thing quite a bit more tangible.

As a bit of compensation for the lack of posts lately (not really, I just thought it would be fun ) I’ve thrown in some videos of some of FS’s more recent games. They’re quite cool but might be a bit long, sorry for that I tried to find the best one for each game with both prerendered CGI and in-game footage.

Armored Core 4 (released late 2006)
Armored Core is FS’s biggest franchise. It’s a series of mecha (huge robots piloted by people) games that has over 20 titles on different systems.

Enchant Arm (released early 2007)
A japanese-style RPG that was the first in that genre for the Xbox360

Tenchu Senran (released late 2006 in Japan and as Tenchu Z outside Japan in early 2007)
FS’s other current big franchise, a series of Ninja games. Latest installment is sadly exclusive to the Xbox360

Just found this quote by Moby on a friend of mines presentation page at a swedish club and rave community:

“When you´re born the first sound you here is a screaming woman, unless your mother was anaesthetised. So your most primal sounds are, first of all the the heartbeat, which is like the kick drum, and then a screaming woman.
So we´ve all been listening to techno ever since we were born!”

- moby

Just brilliant. I’ve only been out clubbing in Tokyo once and I can’t wait to check out some more of the clubs there!

Linköping where I live is pretty well known (at least by its inhabitants) for its wetness. Now please don’t let this paint up pictures in your mind of Venice or Stockholm, no, Linköping is built on a plain and its town center has been cleverly placed as to avoid all nearby rivers and/or bodies of water. The wetness therefore comes from above. Yesterday was one of those days when the skies sort of felt like making up for a few days of decent weather, and of course, as always, I got caught in the worst downpour. I was so wet when I got home that I decided to take a picture to commemorate the occasion and since I don’t know what else to do with it I figured I’d post it here. Don’t ask me how I managed to pull of that smile for the camera.

Two other things Linköping is known for is biking and wind, I’ll make a note to post a whiny rant on that match made in hell as well some time.

I quite frequently run across news or comments about “those wacky japanese”, most of them founded in bad translations or just total lack of knowledge about the country and people they’re mocking. This one takes the price though.
A recent hoax story claims that about 2000 sheep has been sold as poodles to japanese customers who couldn’t tell the difference. This is obviously fake. Of course any japanese person can tell the difference between a sheep and a dog just as any european person would be able to spot the difference between say, a camel and a donkey.
I’ve seen this false story printed all over the english-speaking web and I just can’t believe that anyone would be so stupid as to believe this, not to mention publish it!

Anyways, Here’s a link that shows the spread of the hoax in Australia and explains some of the errors in the story (which seems to be based on a joke recounted on this year old japanese blog entry)

Anyone who knows me also knows I’m a big fan of the open source operating system Linux. I’m also a big fan of, instead of just bookmarking (and forgetting about) links, having way to many tabs open in firefox with all sorts of useful (and some totally useless) info. Lately some of these tabs have been articles that I found interesting and wanted to share with people through this blog, so to free up some tab-space and also some memory for my already struggling computer I figured I’d post links to some of these articles:
Linux Spreads Its Wings In India is about the spread of Linux in indian schools, the thing I found amusing was the quote that gave this post it’s title.

Hasta la Vista part1 and part2 deal with the problems Microsoft is having with it’s next operating system “Vista”. It’s been over 5 years since they released “Windows XP” (can someone please explain the logic behind their version numbering/naming to me?) and Vista has had almost all the promising features initially promised removed one by one to meet a deadline that has been continuously moved forward. The latest estimate from Gartner is that it might ship in may 2007. By comparison my current choice of Linux distribution, Ubuntu, was started 2 years ago and are releasing the fifth version of the OS in late October and will have released yet another new and improved version before Vista ships. Every new Ubuntu version is also easily upgraded to the next over the internet without need for CD:s and reinstallations.

I just love reading japanese news articles sometimes. Inbetween all the writings about the disaster that is japanese foreign politics (might do a post on this if I feel up to it) and cautious reports on the improving economy, you can find some very nice little articles. The particular one that motivated me to write my second blog entry in one and the same blog, a world first no less (do I get a cracker now?) is this one. Don’t worry it’s in english as I usually turn to the Asahi shimbuns english edition for my fix of japanese news with occational excursions to other sites filtered through rikai.com.
If printed i a swedish newspaper this article would probably have been one and three quarters of a line long simply stating that “Two really big space-rocks (but not qite as big as Victoria Silvsteds silicon-implants or Göran Perssons ego…or his belly for that matter) have performed a sex-change and are now to be called ‘planets’.” and just might go on to elaborate on the suspicions of the ‘planets’ getting high on illegal dark matter at the naming ceremony.
While the japanese are just as good or maybe even better at being as utterly shallow as the overly american-influenced swedish press they also have the wonderful ability of taking this quite insignificant little notice and making into an article on how we should treasure our own planet in a way that would make hippies cry and make the rest of us start thinking about small perfectly raked gardens.

Ok, so maybe it doesn’t count for much to call FP on your own blog buuuuut since I’ve never done it before I’m going to forgive myself.
I’ve toyed with the idea of starting my own blog for a while (and I feel that I’m quite uniqe in this respect….ooor maybe not) and even made a previous attempt which, of course, failed miserably. The problem was probably trying to be to serious about it and….yes, the no.1 reason for all the dead blogfish floating around belly-up in cyberspace (now that’s a word I haven’t heard in half a decade or so, I think I’ve caught “age”): trying to find a theme that will make the world a better place, solve world hunger, end all wars, make the evil empire of Microsoft crumble and make me a millionare from gooooogle-ads in the process.
I’ve come to realise that might be aiming a tad bit high, a jump and a skip to the right of the north star to be precise, and thusly I’ve decided to make this blog to be about the soggy mess that is my life instead and by doing so settle for a google-ad income that at it’s best might cover a pizza a month or so. Provided I don’t go for the super-awesome kebab pizza no.2 *droooool* that’ll be way out of my league.

Another big problem I’ve had with blogging is picking a language among the three that I master at least to a certain extent: Swedish, English and Japanese, in order of proficiency. Finally I decided to go with English and maybe a splash of the other two when I feel like it or it makes more sense (yes, in that order).

Incidently the name of the blog is written “hokuô meron pan” in hepburn-style romaji and pronounced “håckuåå merrånnpann” for you swedes out there and preferably not at all by any monolinguistic english-speakers.

Right I think I’ve managed to keep studying at bay just long enough that it might be considered legitaimate to do something about that “grizzly-bear on acid”-like sound eminating from my general “store food here”-area. That’s it for today folks, here’s for hoping this blog stays belly-down, cheers!